A global public good is a good that has the three following properties:
- It is non-rivalrous. Consumption of this good by anyone does not reduce the quantity available to other agents.
- It is non-excludable. It is impossible to prevent anyone from consuming that good.
- It is available worldwide.
This concept is an extension of American economist Paul Samuelson's notion of public goods to the economics of globalisation.
The theoretical concept of public goods does not distinguish with regard to the geographical region in which a good may be produced or consumed. However some theorists, such as Inge Kaul, use the term global public good to mean a public good which is non-rival and non-excludable throughout the whole world, as opposed to a public good which exists in just one national area. Knowledge is a canonical example of a global public good. In some academic literature it has become associated with the concept of a common heritage of mankind.
The stability of the UK's financial system has been described as a global public good by the IMF due to the systems's 'size and role ... in global intermediation puts it in a position to originate and transmit shocks to the global financial system, but also to dampen them'.
Famous quotes containing the words global and/or public:
“However global I strove to become in my thinking over the past twenty years, my sons kept me rooted to an utterly pedestrian view, intimately involved with the most inspiring and fractious passages in human development. However unconsciously by now, motherhood informs every thought I have, influencing everything I do. More than any other part of my life, being a mother taught me what it means to be human.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“In 1869 he started his work for temperance instigated by three drunken men who came to his home with a paper signed by a saloonkeeper and his patrons on which was written “For God’s sake organize a temperance society.””
—Federal Writers’ Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)